In India, there is a considerable disparity between rural and urban areas with respect to health facilities, education, and infrastructural facilities. The major objectives of the present study are to examine the magnitudes of rural-urban disparity, its variation across states, and reasons for such disparity.
A total of 81,712 ever-married women of reproductive age from 26 states in India constitute the data set. BMI is considered to be a good measure of Chronic Energy Deficiency (CED) and obesity. Some socio-economic variables were also considered that are known to affect nutritional status.
For each state, the place-of-residence-wise classification was done. To determine the relationship between CED of women by rural and urban differences with different socio-economic variables, the percentage of urban CED women was subtracted from that of rural CED women. Thus, a positive sign means rural women are more affected than urban women. Correlation coefficients and Chi-square analyses were performed to establish relationship between dependant (nutritional status) and independent (socio-economic) variables.
Key findings suggest disparity in nutritional status of adult women of reproductive age in 26 states between rural-urban areas in India. It was found that the magnitude of difference varies across the states. A noteworthy finding is that more developed states have less and most of the less developed states have more rural-urban differences. Rural-urban difference of the north-east states are low due to many factors including factors leading to higher empowerment of women compared to other states in India.

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